Timeless
by Star Vortex
Summary: It is in the extremities of time that time ceases to matter. Veloci and Moynihan, pre-show. T for blood.


This is the brain child of boredom. 65 million years is a long time to live, with only one other of your species present on the planet. Can't make any assurances about how regularly I'll update, although I'll do my best to be as regular as I can.

* * *

It is in the extremities of time that time ceases to matter. In the infinitely tiny space between the communication of neurons, when the world is so slow by comparison that it seems to stand still, and yet one can still see the birth and death of a universe within a single, all-encompassing moment, time ceases to exist. There are no moments or lifetimes or centuries; there is only the singularity of _being,_ held captive by the unrelenting master of a millisecond that will never, ever end. Never has that moment come before, and, once it is passed, never will that moment come again. In this way, the tiniest of moments are eternities unto themselves, both entirely frozen by and entirely free from the oppressive illusion of time.

In the opposite, the same holds true. When a stretch of time grows so long that there is no point in marking it, time ceases to matter and falls away into a useless afterthought that is hardly noticed. What notice does a star take of the rocks whirling around it like entranced suitors, when the rocks are dead and dust by the time the star has the mind to blink? When time plods on without end or relief, without even light or wind to differentiate one moment from the last, moments cease to impress. Moments pass by in a hasty blur. Soon, the days do, too, and then the seasons no longer seem to be separate. Years become meaningless. Eventually, time itself becomes the same.

They dream of these things together, sometimes, when he feels the weighty oppressiveness of their existence upon his back. He dreams of time, and of stars, and of blurring and stillness and whether or not they are even separate things. Wide wonderings that don't have answers are his escape, but those dreams never last. Inevitably, her dreams will pull him back down.

If he dreams of eternity, she dreams of the captive moments. Points of their lives from _before_ , when their memories seemed linear and useful. She dreams of lying in wait under wavering ferns, watching different-others wander through grass and jungle. She dreams of chasing them, too, and of the pack mates who chase alongside her. She dreams of the skirmish by the river when their pack drove back another and claimed their enemies' territory for their own. She dreams of the night it rained and thundered and she split open the belly of the old matriarch, because the old matriarch had grown weak and what better successor than her to take control? Those are the most common dreams. Sometimes, though, in between dreams of triumph and bloodshed, she will dream of her clutch, nestled in between warm, decaying leaves under the rocky overhang that no thief would dare crawl near.

They dream together, always; when he dreams of time and stars, she follows him down those twisting paths of thought that have no destination. She wonders the same things he does; when they dream, they can almost have conversations in the direct emotions of unconsciousness. But these dreams bore her, and she sees no point in them; they dream _her_ dreams far more often. The moments of her life that she remembers best are their typical fare, and on occasion they will dream for his life. More often than not they were both present to witness the events of their respective memories, and will simply retread the moments like warm and easy prey-trails. There are occasions, though, where they will dream of times before he joined her pack––they have both dreamed of their hatchings at least once––and whichever one is the foreigner in the memory will watch from afar, shapeless and lifeless, pointless save for the sole purpose of witnessing the other's experience before he became one of her family.

They tread these dreams without end, always the same, over and over. Eternity becomes meaningless moments, and each meaningless moment becomes an eternity; dreams, but their very nature, can never be tracked. Again and again they dream their lives, memorizing every moment, every breath, every reaction, every joy and sorrow that either of them have felt throughout their entire lives. Their dreams become a routine, and then they begin having difficulty separating the dream from what had once been. Had they ever lived these lives at all? Was it only the same rut in their minds, repeated and repeated until they could recite the number of leaves on the tree the pack nested under? Had they ever _not_ been dreaming? Were dreams all they were made of?

These thoughts hurt him the most. They crept up slowly, after a hundred years of the same lives lived again and lived again. His dreams became more frequent, taking them both to the worried turmoil of _not knowing_ ; how long had they been dreaming? What if they woke and found that only a single night had passed and the world was still burning? What if they had to go back to sleep and do all of this _again_ , and then wake up the next morning, and then go back to sleep and dream forever? Or worse still, what if they woke and found that they had never existed at all except in the dreams of their own creation?

The more they visited his dreams, the more worrisome his dreams became. They even managed to pierce _her_ thick hide, and her unrelenting stoicism and belligerency began to waver in the face of his uncertainty. His worries, like his dreams, became hers as well. They forgot their lives and instead fell deeper and deeper into this new routine of fear and speculation.

In the end, the fear managed to bring them out of their dreams for a brief time altogether. Terrified of the alternatives, their long sleep sloughed off like old skin and their joined mind once again became two; they abandoned thoughts of time and space and rose to a world made of darkness.

They opened their eyes and found their eyes useless. The lack of light was absolute; there were no cracks in their prison of stone and dust. There was no way to judge what time of day it was.

There was no way to even guess how long it was they had been asleep.

He was the first to move, twitching his limbs worriedly. _How long?_ he cried out desperately. _When? Where… where is the entrance? If we can push the rocks that fell on us… if we can just get out, we can see the sun. You remember the sun, don't you? And the wind?_ He tried to hoist himself onto his feet, but could not. The cave echoed with his exhausted collapse; the long sleep had left him weak. But even so, the sensation of rocks against his scales was practically bliss; physical experience, in any form, was something his body had nearly forgotten. He lay there for a silent moment, reveling in the rough floor of the cave, before reaching out to her once more. _Are you awake? Can you move?_

 _Yes._ He heard her shift, try to stand, and then fail. _I can't get up._

 _How long has it been?_

 _I don't know._

 _Where did we enter?_

 _I don't know._

 _How are we going to get out? What if we don't? We will starve!_

 _Stop,_ she commanded.

He obeyed.

 _You are to stop worrying. It isn't time for this yet._

 _Not time! How could you possibly know? We don't know how much time has passed!_

 _Go back to sleep,_ she chided. _We are too weak. We cannot wake now, or we will die before we leave the cave._

 _I don't want to go to sleep._

 _I know._ Beneath her irritation, he could feel the warm strength of a matriarch that, despite outward appearances, cared for her pack mates enough to keep them from dying. _But we must, or we will die._

 _What if we never wake?_

 _We will wake. When the time is right._

 _When will that be?_

 _When there is food to eat._

 _How long will we dream?_

 _Until we dream no more._

 _When will that be?_

 _When the time comes to live again. Go to sleep now._

 _I am afraid._

 _I know. I will protect you._ She had always protected him. _Go to sleep._

He was reluctant, but she was his matriarch and he could not disobey her wishes. She commanded sleep from him, and so he stopped his stirring, forgot the rocks on his skin, lay his head down and closed his eyes.

 _Until we dream no more._


End file.
